S. L. Nikolayev S. A. Starostin A NORTH CAUCASIAN ETYMOLOGICAL DICTIONARY Edited by S. A. Starostin ***************** ****************ASTERISK PUBLISHERS * Moscow * 1994 The two volumes contain a systematic reconstruction of the phonology and vocabulary of Proto-North-Caucasian - the ancestor of numerous modern languages of the Northern Caucasus, as well as of some extinct languages of ancient Anatolia. Created by two leading Russian specialists in linguistic prehistory, the book will be valuable for all specialists in comparative linguistics and history of ancient Near East and Europe. © S. L. Nikolayev, S. A. Starostin 1994 TABLE OF CONTENTS Editor' s foreword. , . Preface List of abbreviations Literature I ntr oduct ion Dictionary ? . 200 9 . 236 5 . , . ..............242 a' i ... ' 252 a ............. 275 b ...... 285 c 322 c 3 3 L t ^39 C 352 £ 376 : 381 d 397 e 409 4 2 5 Y 474 B 477 h 48 5 h 5 00 h 5 0 3 H 342 i 625 i 669 j '. 6 7 3 k. 68 7 fc 715 I 7 4 2 1 : .... 7 5 4 X. ! 7 5 8 X ; 766 X 7 7 3 L 7 86 t. ' 7 87 n 844 o. 859 p. 865 p. 878 q . 882 q 907 r. ..... 943 s... i 958 s. 973 S. 980 t . 990 t 995 ft. ...... 1009 u 1010 u 1013 V 1016 w. 1039 x 1060 X. ........ 1067 z. ... 1084 z 1086 2. 1089 3 1 090 3 1101 5 1105 I ndices. 1111 5 EDITOR'S FOREWORD This dictionary has a long history. The idea of composing it was already ripe in 1979, and the basic cardfiles were composed in 1980-1983, during long winter months of our collaboration with S. L. Nikolayev in the village of Dubrovki, some 300 miles away from Moscow. Nikolayev, being unable to get a job in Moscow, was teaching in the village school at that time, and I was visiting him from time to time, spending several weeks far from civilization. The first version was handwritten and was ready around 1982. The second version was typed on a Cyrillic typewriter by S. Nikolayev in Dubrovki in 1983, a year before he came back to Moscow from his Dubrovki "exile". After that — until 1988 — the dictionary continued its life as original cardfiles plus handwritten manuscript plus typewritten manuscript. There was absolutely no prospect of publishing the dictionary, because some chief figures in Soviet caucasology were violently against our North Caucasian recon- struction, and there was no way of avoiding them while publishing the book. Conse- quently, I turned basically to Chinese and Altaic studies, and S. Nikolayev to Slavic. But I managed, together with and due to the reputation of Prof. I. M. Diakonoff, to publish a book in München, called "Hurro-Urartian as an Eastern Caucasian Language". This was in 1986, and the book did not go unnoticed by reviewers. In 1987 things started happening. George Soros succeeded in opening a division of his foundation in Moscow. This was the first non-government institution we had ever seen. Then an American armenologist, Prof. John Greppin, came to Moscow from Cleve- land, Ohio, looked at our data and wrote a recommendation letter to the Soros Founda- tion. I received a grant — just enough for buying a personal computer to make a cam- era-ready copy of the dictionary. In November 1988 a group of scholars, including S. Ni- kolayev and me, flew off to the USA to participate in the first Ann Arbor conference on historical linguistics (this was the first time most of us were abroad), where I bought the PC. I am glad to use this occasion to express my gratitude to Prof. Greppin and to the Soros Foundation for their assistance. Since 1988 I was busy developing the database format for the dictionary (I will not go into computer details here, but I am rather proud that the computer program that I had designed primarily for the North Caucasian etymological dictionary is now widely used for all kinds of lexicographic purposes), writing the introduction with phonetic comparative tables, translating everything into English and typing it into the computer. Meanwhile the reconstruction and transcription system was slightly changed, some ety- mologies modified, some abandoned and some added. All changes were discussed with S. L. Nikolayev and approved by him, but all the work of the past five years was done ex- clusively by me, and I bear all responsibility for the final text of the dictionary. Now, in December 1993, the work seems to be completed. There is still very much to be done, both in comparative phonology and in etymology of North Caucasian, and I am quite sure that "Addenda et corrigenda" will follow, but I certainly feel that the publication of what we know so far is necessary. 6 The dictionary in its present state embraces roots common to East Caucasian and West Caucasian languages, as well as the roots shared by at least two subgroups of East Caucasian languages. I did not include roots attested within a single branch of East Cau- casian (e.g., in Lezghian languages) or West Caucasian roots having no obvious parallel in East Caucasian. Sometimes, however, reference to such roots can be found in the body of the dictionary; I hope to publish all available roots of this kind later, in a separate edi- tion. The dictionary contains some information concerning grammatical reconstruction, but it is not a comparative grammar, so most inflectional morphemes were not included. However, pronouns and numerals are abundantly represented. It is important to say that external data — all evidence in favour of the so called Sino-Caucasian or Dene-Caucasian hypothesis — is left out of the book. All reconstruc- tions were made purely on the basis of the internal Caucasian evidence. It is clear that the final proof of the Sino-Caucasian hypothesis depends substantially on the North Cauca- sian evidence presented in this dictionary, but it should be a subject of a special study. I would like to thank numerous friends and colleagues without whom this work would never have been done: Vyach. Vs. Ivanov, I. M. Diakonoff, A. B. Dolgopolski, V. A. Dybo, V. V. Shevoroshkin, A. Y. Militarev, I. Catford, S. V. Kodzasov, M. Ruhlen, V. Chirikba, V. Ardzinba. My special thanks are due to Ramazan Radzhibov — a speaker of Tsezi and the provider of most Khvarshi data in the dictionary; to M. Y. Alekseyev and Y. G. Testelets who took pains to read the whole manuscript and helped with many impor- tant corrections and suggestions; to O. A. Mudrak who helped designing fonts for the laser printer; to my son, George Starostin, who translated the lengthy "Introduction" into English; to American friends, Douglas Smith and Laura Little, who had read through the manuscript and corrected style; and finally to Prof. Greppin and the Soros Foundation, without whose assistance the work would have never been published. Sergei Starostin 1994 7 PREFACE The present work is not the first comparative dictionary of North Caucasian lan- guages (for East Caucasian cf. Leksika 1971, Khaidakov 1973; for part of West Caucasian see Kuipers 1975), but certainly the first etymological dictionary with systematic recon- structions. See the "Introduction" below for the outline of North Caucasian classification and comparative phonology. The dictionary is an outprint from a computer database on North Caucasian lan- guages, which actually is a system of interrelated database files on every subgroup of North Caucasian languages. This determines the structure of an average etymological entry which is the following: 1) Proto-North Caucasian reconstruction. If there are no Western Caucasian reflexes, we give only the Proto-East Caucasian reconstruction (it should be noted, that, in general, Proto-East Caucasian and ProtoNorth Caucasian differ only in a few minor details, see below); 2) The reconstructed meaning (the semantic reconstruction is of course quite tenta- tive; we do not pretend that meanings can be exactly reconstructed in most cases). 3) Reflexes in daughter protolanguages, as well as in isolated Lak and Khinalug languages. If a root is attested only in one language of some subgroup (e.g., in Tindi, but in none of the other Andian languages), we still give a tentative reconstruction for that subgroup. It must be stressed that, for convenience, we grouped Avar together with An- dian languages, although we do not present any Avaro-Andian reconstruction (only Proto-Andian). It should be kept in mind that the Avar forms do not go back directly to the Proto-Andian reconstructions. Therefore the tentative "Proto-Andian" forms, given in cases when the Avar form alone is attested, are doubly tentative (because no Andian forms are attested at all). Still we list them for uniformity's sake. 4) Within each subgroup we list reflexes in basic languages and dialects (see below). The reflexes are preceded by a list of enumerated meanings, and the respective numbers are repeated after particular reflexes (to avoid repetition). The list of reflexes is followed by comments that include all additional information: semantic nuances, forms from other dialects, references and discussion. It is important to note that some existing intermediate reconstructions are also systematically given within the commentary: this concerns Proto-Gunzib-Bezhta, Proto-Tsezi-Khvarshi, Proto-Abkhaz-Tapant and Proto-Adyghe-Kabardian. 5) Every etymological entry is concluded by a general comment (with the same kind of information, but concerning the entry as a whole). The corpus of the dictionary is followed by indices for every language — which, we are happy to say, were made with the help of a computer. For Caucasian languages it is highly important to use the most reliable sources available, because in many early sources (such as all records of Dirr), as well as in some later ones (such as Khaidakov 1973 or Leksika 1971), phonetic transcription is 8 highly inaccurate and may be misleading.